December 2005

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Slingbox

December 22, 2005 in Applications, Consumer devices, Infrastructures by Administrator | 1 comment

The slingbox is certainly a Broadcasting 2.0 device. It sits on top of your home TV and streams the remotely selected channel to you, anywhere you are in the world, through the Internet.
 

2005_12_22_slingbox.jpg

Jeff Pulver relates his very positive experience with this device.

I recall that around year 2000 we have seen many such disruptive devices that were to change the broadcast experience forever (Kerbango was one of the most expected ones). Then the bubble…. Today, iPods and Co. show that we’re back on track.

Link (via pulverblog)

Spoiling PVR Content

December 22, 2005 in Uncategorized by Administrator | No comments

I never thought about it but this guy avoids Yahoo! homepage for fear of seeing the results of content he planned to watch from his PVR:
 
Yahoo! News has spoiled yet another television event for PVR users. This morning they posted a link on their Yahoo! homepage that said R—— denies R——, wins Apprentice. For those of you who’ve yet to watch the show, I won’t ruin it for you, but knowing the winner of the Apprentice will immedietely suck out a lot of joy and suspense from the season finale.
 
He ads that since 10% of americans are using PVRs, Yahoo! should consider posting this type of results on secondary pages.
 
 

WiBro demo in Turin

December 22, 2005 in Infrastructures, Mobility by Administrator | No comments

Telecom Italia and Samsung will demonstrate the WiBro system (the Corean flavor of WiMax) at the 2006 winter olympics in Turin, Italy. After that, we will have the DMB system in demonstration in Germany, presenting the FiFa Worldcup 2006. We have an interesting year for broadcasting ahead of us.
 

links for 2005-12-22

December 22, 2005 in Uncategorized by delus | No comments

links for 2005-12-21

December 21, 2005 in Uncategorized by delus | 1 comment

411-Song

December 21, 2005 in Applications, Mobility by Administrator | 2 comments

Another new cell phone pay service in the US. It identifies the song that you’re currently hearing on radio… or anywhere else actually. Simple system:
 
“How many times have you heard a song and wished you knew who it was or wished you could get it before you forget it? Now you can, just call (866) 411-SONG, here’s how: * Hear a song you love; * Call (866) 411-SONG; * Wait for the beep and hold your cell near the music for just 15 seconds; * We identify the song and send you a text with all the song info (artist and song name) and a link to GET it.”
 
See the demo. At 3.99$ a month it’s not cheap though.
 
 

Qualcomm IP

December 20, 2005 in Consumer devices, Industry by Administrator | No comments

And as I was browsing through The Register, I found this story about the big picture of IP ownership in the mobile wireless world. It looks like patents are moving from one hand to the other in a perpetual fight.
 

Mobile WiMAX Standard Finalized

December 20, 2005 in Infrastructures, Mobility by Administrator | No comments

I’m a little bit late on the news but I just noticed that the IEEE 802.16e has been finalized two weeks ago. As Om Malik puts it, that was the easiest part:
 
… now companies have to get onboard with the concept, start developing silicon and equipment. But more than that, money has to be found, to essentially (and eventually) replicate the cellular mobile infrastructure. It is going to be a very costly and long drawn out process. It might be easy to get caught in the euphoria surrounding the news, but we all need to take a deep breath and get prepared for a long haul.
 
The Register has a short story about this announcement.
 
I have not had the time to look into the specification but WiMAX could be seen as a threat to mobile broadcasting systems such as DMB, DVB-H or MediaFLO. And since WiMAX’s mother tongue is “Internet”,  it could be seen as the long awaited and open platform for disruptive mobile applications. Broadcasting 2.0 believers will have to dig into WiMAX broadcasting capabilities.
 

links for 2005-12-20

December 20, 2005 in Uncategorized by delus | No comments

A very compact DMB receiver

December 20, 2005 in Consumer devices by Administrator | No comments

Samsung has just announced its new tiny DMB phone model number SCH-B360 / SPH-B3600 / SPH-B3650.

2005_12_20small_samsung_dmb_tv_mobile.jpg

Everyday we’re getting closer to mobile TV applications. It’s still not clear to me how important our needs for real-time video streams on-the-move are. But TV was never mobile. It’s certainly worth a try.
 

European “MI FRIENDS” DMB Project

December 19, 2005 in Applications, Services by Administrator | No comments

This looks like another huge project under the Celtic Eureka umbrella. MI FRIENDS will be a two years project for the 75 official participants.
 
The project aimes at a new architecture of inter-working media services based on infrastructures of broadcasting and telecommunications for the media needs of a mobile information society. 
The project goal is to develop and test new mobile media technologies from an economic point of view paying particular regard to social and cultural aspects with media consumer in its centre.  
 
This looks quite interesting since it will give particular attention to DMB technologies as well as to social and cultural aspects.
 

Satellite Radio arrives in Canada

December 19, 2005 in Applications, Industry, Infrastructures by Administrator | 1 comment

I’m quite impressed to see that this becomes real so quickly. I went shopping tonight and took this shot:
 

bestbuysat19dec2005.jpg

 
It’s not just available. It’s on the storefront in big letters. The marketing forces behind XM and Sirius will give them a lead over DAB for a while… maybe a very long while!
 
Satellite Radio is Broadcasting 2.0. It’s pay radio. DAB is also Broadcasting 2.0. It’s free digital broadcasting.

BBC Integrated Media Player (iMP)

December 19, 2005 in Applications, Infrastructures, Media formats, public broadcasting by Administrator | No comments

The BBC iMP is a great Broadcasting 2.0 software application. Since September, some lucky folks in the UK are actually testing it.
 
The software builds a peer to peer (P2P) network to support the distribution of BBC content. Each file is DRM protected and stays accessible for 7 days after its “transmission”. In other words, it’s a BBC only PVR with a one week memory. That’s quite limitative but hey, that’s just a trial. Let’s hope they get positive feedback from their community.
 
And in the meantime, the trial period has been extended until the end of February 2006.
 

Tony Ageh, BBC Controller, Internet says: “We really want to understand the benefits that iMP can bring to our audiences.

We know that there is likely to be a ‘honeymoon’ period of a few weeks, when our participants are likely to use iMP more often than normal. The data from the extra two months should really help us to comprehend what users want from the service and how they are using it.

“This will be invaluable for us in making our case to the BBC Board of Governors for a full roll out of iMP.”

 

Link

“About” this blog

December 19, 2005 in Divers by Administrator | No comments

I just posted a first draft of the about section for this blog. I took it from another text I wrote some time ago. It is not precisely nor extensively what I understand under Broadcasting 2.0 but it’s certainly a good start. I’ll try to work on it in the coming weeks.

CBC 2.0

December 18, 2005 in Services, public broadcasting by Administrator | No comments

A good post on “dose” where CBC’s vision of the future is questioned. That’s all Broadcasting 2.0.
Producing & disseminating audio is so cheap and easy now, and so much wonderful audio will be produced in the coming years — by smart public broadcasters, and also by joes and janes at home — all of it accessible on net. Why listen to CBC if they insist of becoming AOL audio, and do not understand what’s happening on the web? Why support an institution that does not reflect anything i believe in? (freedom, the responsibilities of a public broadcaster, diversity, non-commercialness etc).
 
In a comment, Tod Maffin provides some answers.
 

Tim Berners-Lee just started his blog

December 18, 2005 in Divers by Administrator | No comments

Well, I ‘m certainly not the WWW inventor but I started my blog two weeks before him!
 

links for 2005-12-16

December 16, 2005 in Uncategorized by delus | No comments

MPEG LASeR Standard

December 15, 2005 in Media formats, Mobility by Administrator | 1 comment

LASeR is a recent open standardization effort targeting “rich media” mobile multimedia platforms. As such, it could become a component of the broadcasting DAB and DVB-H consumer devices. 
Here is an excerpt from the technical white paper:
The inherent content and binary encoding structure makes it inappropriate for the mobile. Instead of compromising on the technology performances, MPEG reached the conclusion that an optimum between feature richness/compression efficiency and device constraints needed to be found and decided to create a new standard for Rich Media for constrained devices.

Podcasting Survey at CBC

December 14, 2005 in Media formats, Services, public broadcasting by Administrator | No comments

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation,  as well as its french counterpart SRC, has a limited but good podcast offering.  CBC currently conducts a survey to better understand their listeners’ needs. Would I be paying for the podcast shows?
 
Before podcasting, my favorite radio show was “unavailable” to me. In fact, it airs daily from 9 to 11 AM while… guess what? …I’m at work. Podcasting is not just a nice to have alternative. It’s the only way I can access this great content (for which I paid for… some fractions of seconds of it at least!).
 
So before I have to pay for this, I would probably suggest to take down most of the costly FM transmitter networks and replace them by some inexpensive P2P seeding servers.
 

Media roundtrip

December 14, 2005 in Industry, Infrastructures by Administrator | No comments

A popular radio show goes to Sirius then cable tv and now, video streaming on the Internet. 50% of its 100.000 audience listens to it through podcasting. That’s Broadcasting 2.0.
 

links for 2005-12-13

December 13, 2005 in Uncategorized by delus | 1 comment

Grassroot media

December 12, 2005 in Uncategorized by Administrator | No comments

Today, my colleague pointed me to these incredible video clips produced by a friend of his son. I’m not so sure about the tools he uses but in a couple of minutes you see it all: 3D animations, The Matrix effects and much more. And on top of all, great scenarios.
 
Here are two extremely popular examples of what creative and highly motivated minds will do with… well… very low budgets!
  • Original Star Trek sequel brougth to you by real real fans: Wired december 2005 paper
  • The Codex: a group of teens who build and record SF clips from an X-Box game engine!

These guys distribute their content over Internet. Peer-to-peer networks are used to disseminate the video files efficiently and at no cost. This makes sense, of course, when files are large and extremely popular.

These are great examples of  what Broadcasting 2.0 is about: high volumes of data, one-to-many cheap distribution and also, great alternative content that people want to see.

Jack FM radio format

December 12, 2005 in Services by Administrator | No comments

Chris Anderson has a post on his Long Tail blog about a new radio format that could at best extend radio’s life:
I’ve been following the rise of Jack FM a lot lately… It’s alleged to be the fastest growing new broadcast format in radio today (I think that honor might actually go to latin radio, but it’s certainly one of the most popular), based on the idea of pulling the songs played from a much longer playlist and having no DJs.
 
The Jack FM format is based on 1000 titles playlists instead of the very commonl 100 or even 40 hits playlists.
 

links for 2005-12-12

December 12, 2005 in Uncategorized by delus | 1 comment

links for 2005-12-10

December 10, 2005 in Uncategorized by delus | No comments

links for 2005-12-09

December 9, 2005 in Uncategorized by delus | No comments

links for 2005-12-08

December 8, 2005 in Uncategorized by delus | No comments

I stumbled upon “StumbleUpon”

December 8, 2005 in Applications by Administrator | No comments

Needless to say I am no native english speaker (nor writer!). In my previous post I used the expression “stumbled upon”. Since I had some doubts about the validity of the expression I googled it.
 
I learned three things:
  • There is a great social Web application called StumbleUpon
  • On the Web you can stumble upon everything (including StumbleUpon.com)
  • “to stumble upon” is a valid english expression

An Open Source Media manifesto

December 8, 2005 in Uncategorized by Administrator | No comments

Just stumbled upon this short manifesto on the Internet Archive. It was mostly articulated around the 2004 US elections.
 
 In the digital era, free expression and public critique is both easier and harder than in the past with print media. In the digital world, free expression means posting text, audio, and video on the Internet for others to see. Free services exist for those that want to post text, but audio and video pose cost constraints that only the professionals can afford. Furthermore, public critique requires an ability to refer to and quote other’s comments, and then add commentary around these quotations. Again, this is easy in the text world of the World Wide Web through hypertext links, but audio and video are not yet easy because of a lack of tools to easily quote from these sources. “Deep linking” into video is possible in theory but not in practice.

Less attention for mainstream media

December 7, 2005 in Uncategorized by Administrator | No comments

The amount of time we spend with traditional mass media keeps declining. The most affected sectors: books, box office, newspapers, music and radio. Chris Anderson provides some numbers in his Long Tail blog.
 
 

links for 2005-12-07

December 7, 2005 in Uncategorized by delus | No comments

links for 2005-12-06

December 6, 2005 in Uncategorized by delus | No comments

links for 2005-12-01

December 1, 2005 in Uncategorized by delus | No comments